Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Book Review: Exit, Pursued By Bear

TITLE: Exit, Pursued By Bear
AUTHOR: E. K. Johnston
PUBLISHED: March 15th, 2016
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Realistic Fiction, Drama
PREMISE: A girl gets drugged at her summer cheerleading camp and finds out she was raped while she was drugged and deals with the fallout.
MY REVIEW: I wanted to like this book so much more then I did. I don't think every book dealing with rape has to be like say...Speak where bad things upon bad things happen to the main character.
That said...this was like the opposite of Speak. The rape was literally the only bad thing to happen to the character. Afterwards, she cried, then basically went on with her life with little to no fuss. Which...okay. That's great. Everyone handles situations like this differently. There are rape survivors who are able to function perfectly fine afterwards. But...this book kind of went overboard to the point that there was basically no conflict in the book whatsoever. The result is frankly a very idealized and thus very boring book.
Honestly, the more I think about this book, the more it bugs me. I'll give the author points for trying. But this was honestly...just too unrealistic and idealized for my taste. Also a tad insulting for those rape survivors who don't have the easy access to care, a supportive environment, etc. such as this very privileged character had.
WHO SHOULD READ: Um....I don't know. People who want an idealized handling of rape I guess?
MY RATING: Two and a half out of Five frowns

About Me

I am a long-time book lover who reads mostly fantasy oriented things but also mystery, historical fiction, sci-fi and anything that strikes my fancy. There's a mixture of YA, Adult, and occasionally Middle-Grade books on here. Some obscure, some best-sellers. I'm really not picky when it comes to books.
Most books you'll see here are acquired from the library or bought with my own money. Occasionally there will be ARCs from Net Galley.